Also, don’t forget that January is the second biggest month for book sales each year. More and more gift cards are being bought and those cards are mainly used in January and February. Is your book going to be easy to find come January?

At The Cadence Group, we want to help you maximize your sales, so we are offering these packages at deeply discounted rates.

Don’t miss out on these great opportunities to get your book in front of consumers during the world’s busiest shopping season!

Amazon Optimization

With holiday online shoppers at an all time high, is your Amazon page ready for the holidays? Take advantage of our Amazon Optimization program and make sure your book is easy to find at the world’s largest bookstores. We will set up your author page, tag your book with appropriate key words and link your book to other bestselling books in your category  all in time for the busiest shopping season of the year! ($995)

End of Year Book Tour

Now is a great time to get your book out to bloggers and reviewers and generate discussion on the web. For the holiday season and in celebration of the New Year, The Cadence Group is pleased to offer a holiday blog tour to our clients. What does this mean? We’ll reach out to over one hundred reviewers requesting a review of your book, guest post from you, the author, or an author interview. Our goal for this campaign is to get your book in the hands of reviewers and secure a minimum of 6 to 8 reviews or guest posts to run in late 2011 and early 2012. ($2,975)

End of Year Giveaway

Many of our bloggers host giveaways throughout the months of December and January as part of their holiday outreach. We will be pitching giveaways to a select group of reviewers in time for end of year promotions. If you would like us to include your book, let us know! ($995)

Top Independent Bookstore Campaign

Have your book sent and reviewed by the top 25 book buyers in the independent bookstore market. Books are shipping November 15th, so hurry to get your book into this very effective mailing and pitch campaign! Any books not ready for the Holiday season will be eligible for our January 10th mailing for Spring & Easter … so call now for details! ($1,175)

We are fast approaching the #1 book buying season. Are you ready?

Call or email us today to find out more about these great opportunities!

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/publishing-perils-in-the-digital-age/

It seems to me that Penguin is foolishly trying to intimidate all of their authors by making such a loud, scary fuss over Davenport’s decision. It looks like they are trying to scare the rest of their authors from ever trying to do the same thing.  I wager that they will soon see a huge backlash that will make them sorry they ever tried that.

First – GO BUY Kiana’s book!
http://www.amazon.com/HOUSE-SKIN-PRIZE-WINNING-STORIES-ebook/dp/B004EHZWJE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319034170&sr=1-1

Second - Published authors? Go publish all of your unpublished and out of print work yourself as eBooks. Run, do not walk. Make sure that PENGUIN is the one that gets the message…. publishing is not the lofty realm of the privledged NY houses and has not been for a long time. You have the right to publish what you have created.

Time to scare the hell out of Penguin….

I’ll go on the record here:

The changes might actually be an improvement once you stop freaking out about the fact that something is different. Now we can make lists of friends and not have to wade through all the minutiae of every person who lands in that grey spot between unfriending vs. hiding vs. terribly interested.

Relax. Try it out. See what you like. Give it a few days. THEN make a solid, rational case for your opinion. “I just don’t like change” is not a position which one should state publicly. Shhhh…. go play with your new Facebook and stop cluttering my new “Top Stories”.

My thoughts on this run the gamut from “Now” to “Never”.  To be specific… there comes a time when investing money in your marketing plan no longer makes sense.  If you have hired a reputable, hard-working PR firm, if you have spent the time and money on marketing your book to your core readership, if you have made your book available through fulfillment or distribution channels… if you have done all of this for over a year and  you are still not selling books?  It is time to put away the checkbook.

BUT, it is NEVER time to put away the clock.  This book is your baby.  If you still have the time to watch Mad Men, then you have the time to participate in discussion groups, visit your local library’s book club, participate in a local author event, review other author’s books on line…. there is always something you can do with our time to get your book out there.  You never know when the “right” person will read it and it is your job to keep putting in the time to promote your book. 

Some books take years to take off.  But it won’t happen if you have given up.

Here is a recording of her great advice for authors:

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The Cadence Group and New Shelves Distribution are thrilled with the work that Sean Akers (Seanakers.com) did on our websites!

Please check out our new sites:

www.thecadencegrp.com
www.newshelvesdistribution.com

We welcome your comments!

Amy

                          “When do I start marketing my new book?” 

“I don’t have a lot of money. What are the must-dos of marketing my book?”

“What’s the difference between traditional publicity and marketing?”

Come ask us anything on this week’s Free Advice Friday *
Friday at 12 noon Eastern Time

(* Yup… we really mean it!)

At 12:00 pm EST, please call in to The Cadence Group Free Advice Friday line:

Dial: 218.486.1616
Use Passcode: 1074462

And get your questions answered!

Free Advice Fridays is a weekly session of free consulting and advice from The Cadence Group.  This week we are having a session about marketing.  Feel free to email us your questions ahead of time or bring them with you to the call.  Don’t be shy!

Please email or text at any time during the call with questions you would like us to address:

To email: advice@thecadencegrp.com
To text: 330.219.7108

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Best,

Bethany Brown
Amy MacGregor

The Cadence Group

See you then!

We also mentioned some websites everyone should check out before choosing a self-publishing option. These are forums and/or blogs where folks ask questions and provide information about their various experiences with some of the different vanity presses, co-publishing companies, publishers and literary agents.

Here’s a list of some links we really like:

http://pred-ed.com/
http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/
http://www.writersweekly.com/whispers_and_warnings.php
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/